potential Government Shutdown in the media

As we loom in the 11th hour of our government squabbling like sibling while putting families like our military in an awkward position of having to go to work and not getting paid without other resources. I found this pointed video that puts it in perspective.

While you watch this video just remember that our president(cough) has stated that a shutdown would be inexcusable while threatening to veto a bill that would buy another week and fund the military through the rest of the fiscal year.

Busy today

And for the next two weeks.  If I post, it'll be sporadic.  Sorry, but the free ice cream machine is turned off for a bit.  See you after Tax Day.

Got a spare million dollars?

CMBlake links to one of the coolest things I have seen in a while, and I know just where I'd put it.  I just need about a million and change.  Anyone out there feeling rich?

How not to write a judicial decision

Presented by one Judge Sumi, or as someone described her (and I don't know where, but it rocked), Delores Umbridge.

If Sumi expects to have her decisions upheld by the state Supreme Court, perhaps she should take care to write them properly in the first place.   She will have trouble explaining how she justified interfering with the publication of  law in defiance with Wisconsin precedent, and I doubt that the Supreme Court will give her three tries to get that right.  Furthermore, her commentary about the legislature’s ability to work around her won’t exactly be seen as uninterested jurisprudence, either.

Now, she's a judge, which means that she should have at least a partial grasp on the law, right?  Perhaps if she was actually worried about the law rather than enforcing a pure political action via judicial fiat, it wouldn't have taken her three tries to get it right.  But then, this is Dane County, the home of Madison WI, a hole in Wisconsin surrounded by common sense.

Manpower

Doing manpower studies at work, in order to justify our requests for more staffing up the chain.  Looking at my spreadsheet, I see that I've had a grand total of two days off this month.  Most my section isn't much better than I am.  A good amount of travel included in there.

Next month, about the same.

This is why the military is paid on a salary.  Were we to get paid time-and-a-half like the unions, we'd eat up our entire budget in the first few months of the fiscal year.  And this is all rear-eschelon stuff here.  This isn't combat ops, which is essentially 12-16 hour days.  I'm lucky to have 10 hour days back home.  Think about that the next time a public employee union member shrieks that they want more of my money for their cushy job.